A Science Museum's New Experiment

In its past life, San Francisco's Exploratorium science museum was a bit of a shut-in, confined to a Beaux-Arts building with almost no windows, focused on hands-on science experiments.

As it prepares to emerge April 17 from a multimillion-dollar overhaul, the museum is leaving behind its black-box setting at the city's Palace of Fine Arts and reopening in an expansive new waterfront campus along the heavily trafficked...